Honor Among Thieves: Star Wars (Empire and Rebellion) (28 page)

“Um,” Han said. “Good job.”

“It's not over. There's still a lot of fighters up here. We're going to have to pull back,” Luke told him.

“I don't think anyone can fault you, kid. We'll let you know what we find.”

“All right, Han. Good hunting.”

He put down the headset. Chewbacca chuffed. “He got it,” Han said. The wookiee stood still for a moment, then went back to welding. Really, what else was there to say?

The others were gathered by the crew ramp. Baasen and Sunnim had their blasters in their hands. Scarlet had a handheld mapping device and a long black-composite blade. Leia was adjusting the seal on thigh-high black boots scavenged from a repair suit. From its clamps, the R3 whirred and whistled. Han nodded to it like he had any idea what it was saying.

“All right,” he said, lowering the ramp. “Let's go.”

Twenty-Six

The Bothan stumbled over a thick root and crashed into the trunk of a massive tree. He pushed away from it, shouting curses in three languages. A long, slimy vine came away with him, wrapped around his face and neck. He continued to curse and claw at it for several seconds before Scarlet pulled the knife from her belt and cut the creeper away in two small strokes.

“Lovely planet,” Baasen said, waving his hand in front of his face to keep the clouds of tiny biting insects from flying into his mouth when he spoke.

“You could have stayed on the ship,” Han said.

“You'd have trusted me on your precious
Falcon
?”

“I'd have trusted Chewie.”

Leia had wrapped her face in a gauzy white scarf to keep the bugs away, but she was fighting to keep her tall black boots from sticking in the thick, muddy jungle floor. Han walked at the rear of the group, one hand on his blaster, waiting for something larger and hungrier than the bloodsucking insects to make an appearance. All around them, the air was full of the whine of tiny wings and the calls of unseen animals. Everything stank of rot.

Once the Bothan was freed, Scarlet shifted back to the front of the group and took point again. She moved through the thick undergrowth, finding the most solid footing available and avoiding the tangles of vine and moss that hung from the branches above. Occasionally, she opened up a hologram of the terrain on her datapad and checked their location. She looked like she knew what she was doing, so Han trusted that they were heading on the right path to find the temple. If not, he'd never know. The jungle looked exactly the same in every direction. And the heavy canopy completely blocked off the sky, making his usual tools for orienting useless.

“Watch out,” Scarlet said, pointing off to her left and moving right. “Deep mud here.”

Leia pulled her boot out of another mud hole with a wet sucking noise. “And that makes it different how?”

Instead of answering, Scarlet shouted in alarm and danced away from the large puddle, yanking out her blaster as she moved. Behind her, the Bothan yelled and backpedaled into Baasen, nearly knocking him down. By the time Han reached the front, Scarlet was pointing her weapon at a large creature in the middle of the puddle. Its wide mouth was large enough to swallow a Wookiee whole, and a cluster of eyes the size of Han's fist sat on top of its broad head. Its brownish gray skin was almost exactly the same color as the mud around it, and when it croaked at them, its mouth was filled with big flat teeth.

“Don't shoot it!” Han yelled as he ran up to it.

Scarlet frowned and cocked her head. “It almost ate me.”

“It wasn't going to eat you. Look at it. All the eyes on top of its head and camouflaged skin—it spends most of its time hiding under the mud. And those teeth are for grinding plants, not animals. Don't shoot it for being ugly.”

“Sure,” Scarlet said, holstering her blaster. “Didn't realize you guys were friends.”

Han leaned over and patted the monster's snout. “It's just curious. Never seen a human before, I bet.”

“What about Bothans?” Sunnim said, clearly not entirely convinced by Han's explanation.

Han ignored him. “Watch out for us,” he told the monster. “We're not very nice.”

As if in response, the creature slid back under the mud almost without a sound. Scarlet rolled her eyes at Han and started off again, Sunnim close behind.

“Didn't know you were such an animal lover,” Leia said when she caught up to him.

“If everyone got to kill anything that looked big and scary, Chewie would never be able to leave the ship.”

Leia laughed and hooked her arm through his, using his support to keep her feet out of the worst of the mud. “Funny, I always took you as a shoot-first sort of fellow.”

“Oh,” Han said, “trust me. I am if you're waving a blaster in my face. Not for the crime of being slimy and having too many eyes.”

“See?” she said. “There, you keep doing that. Surprising me.”

“I'm a complicated man. Many layers to me.”

Leia jumped over a large tangle of roots, using Han's arm to keep from sliding when she landed on the muddy jungle floor on the other side. A cloud of the little biting insects burst out of tiny holes in the ground when her foot hit, and for a few moments neither of them spoke. Leia clutched her scarf around her head, and Han waved his hand to drive off the insects. After a while, the bugs seemed to get tired of annoying them and left.

“You know what I find?” Leia asked.

“About?” Han responded.

“Things with layers. When you peel off a layer, you usually find another, smaller layer of the same stuff underneath.”

Han laughed despite himself. “You asking to look?”

She swatted him, but he could see her smiling under the veil. If it weren't for the mud, creepers, stinging bugs, and nearby presence of a hyperspace-disrupting alien technology already at least half under the control of the Empire, it might have been a very pleasant walk.

Something the size of Han's hands flapped out of the jungle canopy and landed on the Bothan's shoulder. It had large, diaphanous wings in dozens of bright colors. They seemed to sparkle and radiate even with only the faint light the jungle let in. The body was thin and multi-legged and graceful, with a small, wedge-shaped head and large, black eyes. A long tail curled behind it, quivering gently.

Han froze. “Sunnim,” he said loudly, though trying to keep his tone conversational so no one panicked. “Do not move.”

Scarlet stopped and turned around, her face lighting up when she saw the fragile-looking creature. “Oh, would you look at that!”

“Kill it, kill it now,” Han repeated, still keeping his voice level and light.

Scarlet frowned at him, but to her credit she started to slowly pull the knife off her belt. “Are you sure? It doesn't seem—”

While she was speaking, Sunnim reached up and touched one of the delicate wings. “Pretty” was all he had time to say before the long, curling tail snapped out and struck him in the throat. Scarlet yanked out her knife, but Han already had his blaster in his hand and in one shot blew the creature off the Bothan's shoulder in a shower of flaming bug parts.

Sunnim stood rigid, the color of his skin darkening all around the angry, red wound the stinger had left. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but only a stuttering gasp came out, followed by a spray of foamy saliva. Scarlet and Baasen rushed to him, helping to lay him gently to the ground. The Bothan continued to choke out an increasing spray of white foam, his body stiff and trembling.

Scarlet pulled the medpac off her waist, but by the time she'd opened it, the Bothan's struggle was over. Sunnim lay stiff, staring up at the sky through sightless eyes.

“Sorry, my boy,” Baasen said, his hand under Sunnim's head, the stump of his other arm on the dead man's chest.

Scarlet slowly put her medical supplies away, shaking her head. “Great. The things that look like monsters aren't, but one of the most beautiful creatures I've ever seen can kill in seconds with one sting? What kind of world is this?”

“When something hangs out in an environment as dangerous as this in bright, eye-catching colors, it's because it's the meanest thing in the jungle. The brightness a warning, not an invitation,” Han told her.

Leia put a hand on Baasen's shoulder. “I'm sorry about your friend.”

“My thanks to you,” Baasen said, standing up and brushing the mud from the knees of his pants. “Not that the cheap little bastard was a friend, but I appreciate the courtesy.”

“Maybe I should walk up front,” Han said. He took the lead with Scarlet when they started moving again. The poor Bothan's rotten cabbage smell didn't seem offensive anymore, only sort of sad. The last of the scent quickly faded behind them, replaced by the jungle's sour dirt stink.

“What makes you such an expert on alien life?” Scarlet asked after a few minutes.

“I've been all over the galaxy. Seen a lot of stuff,” Han said, panting with exertion. “Plus, I have common sense.” The ground level had started to angle up, and the steep climb only made walking in the mud that much harder.

“Lot of deadly butterflies?” Scarlet asked, half teasing. Han was gratified to hear she was puffing, too.

“There's a million variations of the same things, but they're the things you see over and over,” Han said. “The eyes go near the mouth. Dangerous things get warning colors. We've all got eyes and legs, because eyes and legs are useful things to have no matter where you come from.”

“Fascinating.”

“You asked, sweetheart.”

After a few more minutes of climbing they reached the top of a rocky hill. The trees thinned out, and they could see sky again. There were still brightly colored streamers of energy spreading across the blue, and columns of smoke showed where pieces of the Star Destroyer had fallen through the atmosphere.

Off in the distance, in the direction they'd been traveling, a massive construction of cut stone poked up through the jungle canopy.

“Looks like you've got us heading the right way,” Han said, pointing out the massive temple to Scarlet.

“Good work,” Leia said, coming up to stand beside them. “I'd hate to get lost in this.”

“You and me both,” Han replied.

“'
Bout an hour, you think?” Baasen asked, pulling out his datapad and trying to bounce a rangefinder off the top of the temple.

“Sure,” Scarlet said with a shrug. “If we don't fall in a sinkhole, or get eaten by bog monsters or stung to death by bugs, or run into some new horror we haven't seen yet. I believe someone mentioned snakes earlier.”

Baasen laughed and put a companionable arm around Scarlet's shoulder. “I like you, girl. You've got spunk.”

Scarlet laughed back. “I don't like you. You're about to lose another hand.”

Baasen kept his smile, but he removed his arm from her shoulder.

Half an hour later, they finally found a snake. A massive creature, twice as big around as Han's waist, with bright scales like burnished copper and brass. It lay motionless across their path like a fallen log, the head and tail so far away they weren't visible in the dim light and underbrush.

“Do we shoot it?” Baasen wondered aloud.

“It's not moving,” Han said. “It seems perfectly happy. Look.” He jumped over the thick body of the snake. “Just leave it alone.”

Scarlet hopped over the thick, scaly body, then held out her hand to Leia. The Princess was shorter than the rest of them, and leaping over the snake wasn't as easy for her, but with Scarlet's help she made it. Baasen backed up, gave Han a skeptical look, and then ran at the snake. When he pushed off to leap, his leg shot out from under him in the wet mud and he slammed into the snake's side at full speed, bouncing across its back and into the mud on the other side.

While Baasen was sputtering and cursing and trying to get the mud off his face and clothes, Han held his breath, waiting for the giant snake to react.

The reaction, when it came, was just a ripple of muscle under the scales, and then the snake shot away into the underbrush with surprising speed.

“I think you scared it,” Han said.

Baasen was still brushing mud out of his hair. “If I'd known that was all it took, I'd have kicked the blasted thing in the ribs and saved myself some embarrassment.”

“Maybe we should leave before it realizes its mistake,” Scarlet said, already moving off down the path at a jog.

Finally, they reached the edge of a clearing and, peering past the thick, fernlike undergrowth, spotted the massive stone slabs of the temple just a few hundred meters away. A large opening yawned in the side of the structure, twice the height of a human man and four times as wide. It looked big enough to drive a pair of landspeeders into side by side. Not even a door blocked the entrance.

But between them and that opening, Han counted at least a hundred stormtroopers, several vehicle-mounted rapid-fire anti-aircraft cannons, and five AT-ST scout transport walkers.

“Huh,” Scarlet said.

“Yeah. I really didn't have a plan for this,” Han replied. “We should have had a plan for this.”

“When did we start planning?” Leia asked. “Haven't we been making this up as we go?”

“Think they're afraid of snakes?” Baasen said. “Maybe we could send that big fellow into the camp, create a disturbance.”

“Well,” Han said with a sigh, “we've gone from no-plan to stupid-plan. That's progress of a sort.”

“Red Wave,” Leia said. She was talking into her comlink. “Red Wave, are you out there? This is Pointer.”

“Red Wave Two, here,” Luke said. “Everything okay?”

“No, Red Wave, we're going to need a favor.”

“Tell me what we can do to help.”

Twenty-Seven

Half a dozen X-wing fighters screamed out of the sky, laser cannons blazing.

Han and Leia crouched behind the largest rock they could find, watching the carnage unfold. Baasen and Scarlet were several meters away, taking cover behind a rotted log as big around as Chewbacca was tall.